Viva Pinãta -- Sparrowmints Like Whirlms.

Fiddling around with Viva Pinãta is indeed the best way to come to terms with how the game plays. The controls are big on the context sensitive style. You'll have an onscreen representation of the controls in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. You don't have a character onscreen in the game, instead you're just moving a cursor around from sort of a god's eye view of the garden. You're not looking at the garden from above, you're down in the garden looking about. The controls will change when you move the cursor over something within the game. Depending on what you've got the cursor over and what tool you're currently using you'll get a different possible action. The action is always on the A button. The B button is always to cancel out of a menu or to discard something The Y button is always for information on whatever you have the cursor currently covering. The X button allows you to bring up the main menu where you'll access a multitude of items and options. You'll be able to select which tool to equip. You'll be able to access your journal and the encyclopedia. You'll be able to head into the game's village to visit the store, or the doctor, or the builder, or the post office, or to hire helpers. You start the game by getting a garden on Pinãta Island. It's a run down and unkempt space all your own. You're tasked with cleaning it up. You're given your first tool, a shovel. You can use the shovel to smash the junk sitting in your garden so you can remove it. You can also pound the ground to break up the hard soil to turn it into usable fertile soil. In doing those tasks you'll more than likely level up which rewards you with another tool, a never-ending packet of grass seed. In getting enough fertile soil in the garden you'll also attract your first pinãta which will be a Whirlm, an earthworm. The pinãta who are attracted to your garden will be introduced by a cutscene and they'll show up around the edge of your garden. They'll be colored in black and white. Each pinãta type will have four requirement types. They are requirements for appearance, visit, resident, and romance. The Whirlm requirements are set extremely low as to insure that you'll get one without fail. The appearance requirement covers what it takes for the pinãta to make its first appearance on the outside edge of your garden. The visit requirement covers what it takes for the pinãta to enter your garden proper. The resident requirements cover what it will take for the pinãta to decide to take residency in your garden and make it their home. The romance requirement is what it will take for the pinãta to breed and produce more of their kind in your garden. For example, having a Whirlm in your garden will attract a Sparrowmint. If you get two Whirlm in your garden, you'll get the Sparrowmint to visit. If you get the two Whirlm to mate you'll get the Sparrowmint to move in and stay. When a pinãta moves in to your garden and becomes a resident it changes from black and white into full color and you're able to name it. In order to mate the Sparrowmint you will have to build it a Sparrowmint house in your garden and you'll have to feed each one a Whirlm. What you do to your garden will affect which pinãta types are attracted to your garden. Some will be attracted by the types of pinãta already in your garden and others will be attracted by what's in your garden. For example, they'll be attracted to how much water is in your garden, or what types of fruit trees, or what types of flowers, or they'll come because they're interested in your other pinãta as food. Everyone starts out with a Whirlm, but where the game goes from there is entirely up to you. You build your garden how you see fit. You start with a dirt field. You build it from the ground up from scratch. No two gardens will ever be the same. There are numerous items and thousands of possibilities and more than sixty types of pinãta. It's all up to you. Next time should cover more on mating, and more of the possibilities.